The master alchemist's voice rang clearly from the stone walls. Anyone hearing it knew immediately that he was Important."The vials are identical," he explained, as if lecturing particularly favored ... [+]
Rodrigo is a Chilean architect, designer, and web developer. He has published in Nature, Levar Burton Reads, Future Science Fiction Digest, khōréō among others. He misses his Commodore 64. Pronouns he/him/él. SFWA | Codex | ALCiFF On Bluesky as @culagovski.net "The Color Out of License" is in Short Circuit #15, Short Édition's quarterly review.
I placed the shiny red shape in the exact center of the table.
Martín looked at it dubiously. "That's the strangest cherry I've ever seen. Whoever made it needs to get their printer calibrated, it's all lopsided." He crouched down to get closer look. "The color's amazing though—rich and deep, like food in videos about the uppers."
I winced inwardly. You weren't supposed to talk about the different levels of society—you had to act like everybody was the same, or you could get fined. I pretended not to notice. "It wasn't printed, it was grown."
"I didn't know you could grow food." He chuckled at the idea. "Where'd you get it?"
"I saved up ninety of my outside-minutes and walked all the way around the geodome to the labs. They're trying to make food without printers. Just earth, water, air, light, and artificial pollinators."
"What does that mean?"
"They're replacing a dead insect called b, not sure if that's its name or some sort of code. They haven't had much success—they only let me have a single cherry."
He touched the fruit. "It feels real."
"Want to see how it tastes?"
"Is it supposed to look so crooked and asymmetrical?"
"They said all food used to be like that, the geometric shapes of our food are just marketing."
Martín looked doubtful. "Let's try it, I guess."
I took out a small knife and put the fruit on the tabletop. Before I could cut it, the kitchen emitted a loud, angry-sounding brrrp and a blue glow pulsed around one of the ceiling's camera-dots, right over the cherry.
Martín said, "What happened? Did you pay this month's domotic fee?"
I heard a loud ping in my left ear. "It's the Corporation."
I sent the audiofeed to the unit's speakerfield.
". . . subsection 3567c lists proprietary colors and hues. You have been recorded producing sustenance containing BloodRed #0345, which is not included in your current Food %26 Beverage Visual Pack. Intellectual property guardrails exist for all of society's benefit, and any circumvention or infringement triggers automatic—"
"What does that mean?" asked Martín.
I shut off the audio and paged through the text version. "They think we jailbroke our printer and pirated the color of the cherry. This shade of red is copyrighted, and it's not included in our Economy-Plus license."
"But we didn't print it!"
I shrugged. "We're locked out of all visual packs until they pronounce our case."
Martín let out an annoyed grunt. "How long will that take?"
"Forty-five days," I bit my lower lip.
"So we can't print any food until then?"
"We can. It just won't have any color."
Martín looked angry. "Have it make my favorite dish."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, let's see how bad it is without color."
We'd leased a standard, no-frills printer—all we could afford on Martín's salary at the meme licensing center and my gigs prompting LLMs. It took almost twenty minutes to produce the food.
We didn't speak to each other while we waited, just fidgeted and stared at the screenwall. It was playing a reaction show. Martín laughed at the appropriate times, but I hadn't seen the show it was in reaction to, so I kept quiet, hoping the food would be okay.
The printer dinged and I pulled the dish out. It was hot and had all the right shapes and textures—the ribs with a sheen of fat, the mountain of mashed potatoes with gravy dripping down its side, caramelized onions, crisp French fries, and a side salad of tomatoes and avocado—except every last bit was a uniform light-gray, the exact color of the foodputty the technician filled the printer with every six weeks.
I pulled off a rib, closed my eyes and inhaled. "It smells okay."
I bit into it. "Tastes the same, too."
Martín made a face. "That's disgusting!" His voice was high-pitched.
"But you haven't even tried—"
"I can't live like this." He stood up, knocking the dish to the floor, and stormed out of the unit.
I stayed in my seat, staring for a full minute at the single, red fruit.
It was the most beautiful color I'd ever seen.
I cut into it. It had a strange, dark, hard substance at its center. I'd never seen food with a part you couldn't eat.
I took a bite of the infringing red flesh—it tasted juicy, sweet, and tangy.
Not at all like a real cherry.